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Finland announces increase in defence spending

The Finnish government said on Tuesday it will increase its annual €2.4 billion military spending by €55 million before ramping up to €150 million from 2021. It cited tensions with Russia as a reason for the increase. "Russia aims to strengthen its great-power status, and it has expressed the goal of a sphere-of-influence based security regime," Finland, a non-NATO member, said.

Central European countries say they have "nothing to hide" on rule of law issues - while justice commissioner Vera Jourova said they should agree to the Commission's controversial budget plans on rule of law conditionality.

Giovanni Buttarelli, the European data protection supervisor, says the EU-US data sharing pact known as Privacy Shield will play an increasingly minor role given the general data protection regulation.